Anonymous Breaks Into U.S. Government Cybersecurity Website

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The U.S. government's website for providing online security
guidance has fallen at the hands of the Anonymous hacking group,
in the notorious hacktivists' latest campaign against the threat
of Internet censorship.

The hackers took down OnGuardOnline.gov, a website managed by the
Federal Trade Commission, yesterday (Jan. 23). Before the site
was knocked offline, the hackers plastered a message on the home
page announcing that they plan to "rage a
relentless war against the corporate Internet, destroying
dozens upon dozens of government and company websites," if
lawmakers pass the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) or its European
counterpart, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).
Critics of the measures say they would pave the way for
widespread censorship.

"As you are reading this we are amassing our allied armies of
darkness, preparing boatloads of stolen booty for our next raid,"
the hackers wrote in a post on
Pastebin.

By infiltrating the FTC site, a partnership of 14 federal
agencies, the hackers said they gained access to, and will leak,
passwords, bank account credentials and online dating details
stored on "hundreds of rooted servers."

The takedown of OnGuardOnline was Anonymous' latest tactical
strike against organizations and governments that have publicly
supported the passage of SOPA and ACTA, especially in the wake of
the high-profile
bust of file-sharing site Megaupload.

Last week Anonymous claimed responsibility for cyberattacks on
the websites of Universal Music, the U.S. Department of Justice,
the FBI, the Recording Industry Association of America and the
Motion Picture Association of America. Yesterday Anonymous
hijacked CBS.com, the site of the French media
conglomerate Vivendi, the official site of the French government,
and the website of Poland's president and parliament.